An illumination unit of said type is disclosed in WO 2008/065030 A1, for example. Said specification describes an illumination unit for a vehicle headlight having a light-emitting diode device and a metallic housing which at least partially encloses the light-emitting diode device and which is provided with fastening means allowing the illumination unit to be installed in a vehicle headlight. Said fastening means are embodied so as to enable the light-emitting diode chips to be aligned with respect to the lens system of the vehicle headlight. The metallic housing can be connected to a heatsink in order to cool the light-emitting diode chips and serve to provide electromagnetic shielding of components of an operating circuit that are arranged therein. However, production of the metallic housing is comparatively labor-intensive and costly.